Cons
No eSATA ports. Must open lid with screwdriver to get to ports. Doesn't top every single benchmark test. Graphics cards get loud during 3D gaming.

Bottom Line

The Maingear Shift both promises and delivers a more mature gaming experience. That's not to say it's solely for Mature-audience games, rather it's the hardcore gamer's PC for when he's older (and wealthier).

The Maingear Shift ($6,399 direct) is crazy, high-end gaming rig, which isn't surprising when you look at the price tag. Those six Grover Clevelands will buy you one of the fastest gaming PCs on the market today. The three technologies that contribute to the system's speed and price are the Crucial c300 SSD (solid state drive), twin ATI Radeon 5970 graphics cards, and the overclocked Intel Core i7-980X processor. The SSD is $500 retail, the graphics cards about $1,400, and the processor about $1,000. What is the other $3K for? It went toward an innovative chassis, excellent workmanship, benchmark testing for the overclocking, and (a little) prestige factor. All of these together give us a high-end gaming PC that wins our Editors' Choice award.

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Design
The Maingear Shift uses a custom chassis and it looks like a black metal monolith when you're sitting eye-level with the machine. The front panel swings open to access the Blu-ray burner/DVD burner combo drive. The top of the panel has the usual pop-up access panel featuring a pair of USB ports, audio, FireWire, and a multimedia card reader. Aside from that, there are a few logos visiblejust the Maingear name carved into the front panel. You can make out a plug on the bottom of the back panel, but it's recessed by several inches. There aren't any video, USB, or audio ports on the back. You obviously have to hook the system up to a monitor, so where are the ports? Under the removable top panel that hides the I/O ports for the graphics cards and the rest of the motherboard.

So why are the I/O ports on the top? Maingear has done something so radical, yet basic that you wonder why anyone else hasn't tried and succeeded. Graphics cards normally pump hot air out the back of gaming systems. Considering the way most motherboards are installed, this makes sense. But heat rises. So Maingear mounted their motherboard vertically, which pushes the heated air out of the top instead of the back. The radiator for the system's CPU liquid cooler is also at the top of the case, so all the hot air is directed up and out of the system.

There is a slight drawback to this orientationMaingear had to put a perforated cover on the top of the desktop to cover up the main I/O ports on the top of the system. Also, the fans are noisy when the graphics cards are processing at full capacity.

If you put a wireless transceiver in one of the Shift's USB ports for the keyboard and mouse, the system only requires three wires for power, monitor, and Ethernet. Should you ever decide to install a Wi-Fi card (in case you put this system in a room with no wired Internet access), then that drops the required cables to two. That's not too bad, even if you put the Shift on top of a work desk (provided you have a work desk that large).

Let's talk about access doors for a second: after you've unscrewed the top panel and slid it out of the way, there are two latches under the panel you can trip open. One opens the area "under" the motherboard, and is only of interest if you want to check out how much wiring is hidden under there. The panel "above" the motherboard lets you show off all the hardware inside your PC. Think of it as opening up a walk-in freezer with an integrated beer and meat cooler in your pantry or opening the closet door in your bedroom to show off the walk-in closet with a built-in vanity within. It's all about showing off.

Inside, the Shift's wiring is neat and tight. The cardkeepers holding the heavy graphics cards look great, and they prevent the Radeon 5970 cards from twisting and damaging the motherboard or the rest of your system while the system is being delivered or moved (don't scoff, I've seen it happen to a couple of systems this year). It doesn't have the "refrigerator lighting" that the Alienware Area 51 ($7,866 direct, ) has, but that system has a design for a totally different marketthe adolescent at heart with a fat bankroll. The Maingear Shift is for the 35-years-old and older gamer who still wants to have their toys, but not nearly so garish.

Features
The system has eight USB ports (two USB 3.0, and six USB 2.0), two FireWire ports, and the digital card reader. The system lacks eSATA ports, but with the system's internal hard drive expansion system, you won't need them. There's a half-dozen drive bays inside, and four of them are unoccupied. The two that are occupied contain a 128GB Crucial c300 SSD and a 2TB Western Digital 7,200rpm SATA hard drive.

The hard drive bays have easy removable sleds, and the free bays are all pre-wired with a SATA backplane that makes connecting the new drives simple. Just screw a new hard drive into a sled, then slide it into the bay, and the drive will automatically be lined up with the SATA backplane and connect the integrated power and data connectors.

The SSD speeds up the system's operations, such as installing apps, booting the system, and launching those apps. While 128GB is barely enough for the operating system and a half-a-dozen games, the system's 2TB data drive can certainly handle the overflow. The system has room for 8 more terabytes (a.k.a., four 2TB drives). Installing and uninstalling apps was quick on the system, so you may not mind the SSD's small capacity as muchit seems like a fair trade-off.

My review system came with 6GB of memory, which leaves three system memory slots open. The system uses triple-channel memory architecture, so you'll need to install three more identical DIMMs to upgrade the system. That said, 6GB was enough to trounce competitors at our benchmark tests.

Performance
Thanks to the overclcocked Core i7-980X (4.3GHz vs. the 3.33GHz stock speed), speedy DDR3-2000 memory, and the dual ATI Radeon HD 5970 cards, the Maingear Shift gained some of the fastest tests scores I've seen. The system swept the gaming tests with playable scores for both Crysis and World in Conflict games. The system is able to run Crysis smoothly at both 1,280 by 1,024 resolution (125 frames per second) and 1,920 by 1,200 resolution (72 fps). The scores are even better for World in Conflict at 1,280 by 1,024 (212 fps) and 1,920 by 1,200 resolution (125 fps). The 1,920 by 1,200 tests were run at "very high" settings, so you know you're seeing the game as originally intended by the designers.

The system is just as fast a multimedia performer, but the scores aren't the absolute fastest I've seen. The system took 32 seconds for the Windows Media Encoder test and 47 seconds for the PhotoShop CS4 test. Falcon Northwest's Mach V systems are a smidge faster (20 seconds on WME for a Core i7-980X model, and 46 seconds on CS4 for the Core i7-975 model). Like the Shift, both Falcon NW Mach V units used Intel's fastest processor at the time, overclocked beyond 4GHz. Even if the Shift isn't the fastest overall, it's plenty fast for your multimedia projects.

The other tests showed top scores: 23,625 points is the highest score I've seen on Futuremark's PCMark Vantage test, 2,3849 is the highest score I've seen on 3DMark Vantage (extreme setting), and 34,703 points is the pinnacle of CineBench R10 competitors. The Falcon Northwest Mach V Core i7-975 ($8,240 direct, ) was able to beat the Maingear Shift at the 3DMark Vantage entry-level test, but then again you're not going to buy a $6,000 PC to play at "entry" settings. So again, an overall win, if not an utter victory.

So is the Maingear Shift victorious overall, compared to the competition? In a word, yes. It has the scorching benchmark numbers, it has a radical chassis design, it looks nice, and it makes intelligent choices in terms of features. It's faster than even triple SLI systems with three graphics cards tested in 2009, and so it gains our Editors' Choice award for being an insane, high-end gaming system, replacing the Falcon Northwest Mach V (Core i7-975).

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